Should PD Waste Time on Prologues?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sam48
  • 31 comments
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Should PD waste time on Prologues???

  • Yes, I want Prologues so I have something to hold me over till GT_

    Votes: 38 38.0%

  • No, I'd rather let PD focus on just getting the full game out the door

    Votes: 26 26.0%

  • I'd only want a Prologue if it didn't slow, or extend, the release date of GT5

    Votes: 36 36.0%
  • Total voters
    100
Sam48

Sam48

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GTP_Sam48
After playing GT5 Prologue for a while today, I noticed how different it's going from the final version of GT5. It has different physics, different menus, less features, and a crappy online. Which made me think, should PD really waste time making Prologues? I know they make prologue in order to hype GT5, but it's been 3 years, an I'm sure most people (or the average gamer) have completely forgotten about it.

EDIT: Sorry if the pole is confusing, just ignore the main question.
 
I don't think you'll find anyone on here who would prefer it of GT5 prologue had never come out. We're all fighting for any tiny piece of info regarding GT5, so if PD offer a demo/prologue of course we'll all take it.
 
What.....don't tell me you really think GT5 would have been out 6 months - 1 year earlier if it wasn't for prologue.
And even if it was true we would have completely lost interest in GT with nothing in between.
And Sony Computer Entertainment would have gone bankrupt xD.
 
At the rate PD is going, we will need prologues. Otherwise the kids will think GT5 is a new game :)
 
Sam48
After playing GT5 Prologue for a while today, I noticed how different it's going from the final version of GT5. It has different physics, different menus, less features, and a crappy online.
Click to expand...

right...
GT5P was the beginning of gt5. The game started with it and eventually evolved into what we know today as GT5. PD didn't waste time with prologue because everything that went into prologue, went into gt5. With prologue we got an early taste of GT5.
 
dave_sz
right...
GT5P was the beginning of gt5. The game started with it and eventually evolved into what we know today as GT5. PD didn't waste time with prologue because everything that went into prologue, went into gt5. With prologue we got an early taste of GT5.
Click to expand...

Well not exactly. PD did waste some time. For instance, making menu screens, trailers, box art, and so forth, does not count toward GT5 development.
 
They don't spend time making Prologue as a game per se. Prologue IS GT5, as it existed when they printed up the Prologue discs. Releasing Prologue doesn't take time away from the development of GT_ any more than me mailing you a copy of chapter one would take development time away from the novel I'm writing (just an analogy).

Ok - the online part may be an exception, but I doubt it / from what it was in Prologue if it took any specific time it sure wasn't much.

edit: somebody sort of said my bit i guess, but to respond to responses, menu screens don't just pop out of the blue and become a final version. They too are refined and what we got for prologue reflects this. The people who make trailers/box art and so forth are marketing mostly so that doesn't count against GT5 dev time.
 
Sam48
Well not exactly. PD did waste some time. For instance, making menu screens, trailers, box art, and so forth, does not count toward GT5 development.
Click to expand...
Don't pretend to know the truth...:yuck:
 
Sam48
Well not exactly. PD did waste some time. For instance, making menu screens, trailers, box art, and so forth, does not count toward GT5 development.
Click to expand...
But how do you know that at the time, the menus in prologue weren't the ones they planned to use in the final product? It takes minutes to take PROLOGUE out of all the menus.
 
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I think Prologues are a good thing. It gives us a small taste of where they were headed with the game at the time, and it also allows them to receive some feedback from the consumers as to what should be added/changed for the full game.
 
GT4 came out one year after GT4:Prologue, GT3 one year after GT:Concept Geneva (or what it was called), so I don't know how giving us a little appetizer is really a bad thing.

It's obvious they run into problems with GT5 and that's sad, but saying that's to blame on GT:5Prologue would be a pretty lame excuse.
 
Should PD work on Prologue? NO...it's too late now. If they were kind and generous they would have given us much more DLC for Prologue (a $50 game)...but with GT5 so close on the horizon (we hope), PD doesn't have much purpose in doing so, nor do I really care. What's another ~8 months wait after waiting 5-6 years? :lol:
 
Box art isn't done by the guys doing hard-coding. Menu screens? They usually represent an early build of the screens in the upcoming game.

All Gran Turismo Prologues are basically beta versions of the final game. The tracks in each Prologue make it to the final game. The cars in each Prologue make it to the final game.

This is distinct from the Gran Turismo Concept series, which include cars and tracks that don't make it to the final game.

Dunno what it says about us as a user-group that we actually pay for the beta, though... but I found GT5P an enjoyable game...

Yes, it probably did take up some of their time, polishing up the code to work as a standalone game... but the lack of a Prologue would likely not make the full GT5 come out any earlier.

Besides... Prologue sales fund PD... so who's to say it hinders development?
 
There is an argument that it held back the release for a while...

But you're looking at the negative. They've had so much feedback from the fanbase about the online, the physics, the general gameplay. Even the graphics and sounds which they have improved upon.

The feedback for the online was particularly useful to PD. I wouldn't want to get GT5 and to get the same sort of lag i got when i first played Prologue online. All the feedback from Prologue has contributed to the overall game and it is going to be a better game because of it. I'm thankful for that.

If Prologue never existed, we would have GT5 by now. But it would be subject to at least a year of DLC and patches before it was 'finished'.
 
There's no way that GT5Prologue production delayed the release of GT5. Maybe by a month or two, if that.

It's analogous to an author working on a book, and their publisher
asking for the first few chapters to review. Prologue represents the first few
chapters of the GT5 book.

Also, what a great way to make money.
I'll bet the book industry wishes they could make money that way.
And the gaming industry no doubt feels the same--make ~ $150 million on
a beta/demo.

I also think it represents a clear cut strategy by Sony/Polyphony.
Release Prologue to make enough money to fund the production
of GTMobile (:yuck:) and GT5. Consequently, Sony is not in a rush
to release GT5. They're probably still making around $1 million per month (maybe even more)
on Prologue sales, even at the now-reduced price.

So I think the argument can be made in a roundabout way, that the
fact that GT5Prologue was released and has generated major cash has, in effect, delayed
the release of GT5. I think without the revenue generated by Prologue
sales, Sony might have been more inclined to put the screws to Polyphony
and get them to release GT5 sooner.

So I for one, would rather not see Prologues released in the future.
They are a way for Sony to make money and justify delaying the release
of the full titles.
 
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Prologue has almost paid for the entire production of GT5. For Sony and PD its a worthy avenue for increased revenue. In a console that can't be chipped, its money for every single copy sold.
 
cpp214
There's no way that GT5Prologue production delayed the release of GT5. Maybe by a month or two, if that.
Click to expand...

It has delayed it. But it has contributed to the development so much from the feedback they recieved, it has saved development time in the long run.
 
I, for one, will not vote.
It is impossible for Prologue to delay GT5, because Prologue IS GT5. How something can delay itself, I shall never know. Ofcourse I want to have Prologues in the future, after all, it funds most of the following games development. I gave my $100 because I think PD deserved it, they actually gave us a huge taste of a game to come, not just some pov beta, and they will use the feedback along with this money, to make GT5 the best racing game ever.
 
Even if none of the same code is used and the game looks completely different the prologues are still part of the development of the final game. Programmers and artists learn new techniques and new things about the machine all through development and the final games would not be what they are without the stage it was at prologue. Ok, so some of the team have to spend some time getting it fit for public release but even doing that could benefit the final game.
 
Waste time on Prologue's? I'm would have been more than happy if Sony released a game called GT5 Prologue 2.
 
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GT5P is one phase of the GT5 development cycle (I'm working in software development myself).
By the latest discussions comparing GT5 to GT5P we know GT5 is much superior of GT5P. But in order to get the GT5 quality we see, they must have gone through the GT5P quality and improved from there - this is similar in my work. We are developing something based on requirements/capabilities and after we have something we are working to optimize it while others are adding features to the global product.
Of course that to release an internal version as a product that is work to do, but comparing to the final product it may be 10% as long as you have everything ready and people are working in parallel (testing/validating, designing, etc.)

Note that GT5P is the first GT game that supports online - so for them it's the best test-house to test the servers responses, lagging (data+graphics), user experience (e.g like waiting for 3 minutes for an online game to start and then discover that you are only 2 people racing..., no rooms etc.), and more for the final product.

PD had to release GT5P since PS3+Online is very demanding. Maybe it will be different for GT6 (as long as it will be on PS3 rather than PS4...).

I also think that PD/Sony didn't even think that GT5 will be release in 2010 (maybe only in their nightmares), and it should have been much earlier but I guess we will never know. In that case GT5 should have been maybe 1 or 1.5 years after GT5P which supposed to be OK.
 
I think GT5P would have taken some development time. Its not like you have 10% of a game with a couple of cars and tracks so you just release it as a prologue. In development the game would have been relatively unplayable for regular users, PD had to bring it all together, model the cars to an acceptable level, spend time troubleshooting bugs and all the things that you have to do for a properly polished game. Even with the game code they had available at the time it would have taken a lot of man hours to put that into a playable game ready to be published.

Its not like a demo, which you start developing once the game itself is basically complete, all you are doing is cutting it down to demo size. Prologue is something that would have had to been developed alongside the proper GT5 (or taking time away from GT5) as the actual GT5 code probably wasn't in a state where it was simply to turn it into a prologue.
 
The third option:

"I'd only want a Prologue if it didn't slow, or extend, the release date of GT5"

Is only possible if functionality or features are removed from GT5, or if PD had hired a separate team to develop Prologue, which I don't believe is the case.

Work on other projects means that you are stealing resources away from the main project and will consequently effect the outcome of the main project. It's a basic rule of project management. Your 3 parameters are:

Time, budget, quality

So basically, if you do GT5 Prologue, or the GT Prius demo, or the GT BMW 1-series demo, etc. then it will affect GT5 in one of those 3 ways:

TIME- GT5 comes out later because of Prologue
BUDGET- You have to spend extra money (i.e. hire more programmers) to reduce the impact of Prologue on GT5
QUALITY- if you don't have the extra money or time, you pull features or functionality from the project.
 
Micdog49
Ofcourse I want to have Prologues in the future, after all, it funds most of the following games development. I gave my $100 because I think PD deserved it, they actually gave us a huge taste of a game to come, not just some pov beta, and they will use the feedback along with this money, to make GT5 the best racing game ever.
Click to expand...

I agree, the quality that PD put into their titles is a precious and rare thing in video games. Examples of other strategies causing a drop in quality are all around us; namely, Need For Speed, by releasing too many titles. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is, in my opinion, a rushed, box-ticking and reactionary product made to make money, not simply because we needed it (although the uptake of the product makes it clear that we were keen for more, maybe an expansion on the first MW would have been a better idea?). RD: GRID was a bit too much a people-pleaser for my tastes (although it was stated that it was MEANT to be different from ToCA, I don't personally know many people who still regularly play it). Forza looks and sounds smooth enough, but gets rougher the closer you look at it; the list goes on. The point is that Polyphony do what it takes to get the best game out. That almost unique quality and unwillingness to simply 'milk it' with full-titles (I'm looking at you, Activision! EA!) mean that I have the highest respect for PD, and why I am able to overlook mistakes made by Kaz or SONY in the marketing department.

I, for one, would appreciate more communication from them. But, if they have their reasons, then I respect that; because whatever they do, they do it right! So, I too, am more than willing to help fund their future titles and Kaz's pockets with substantial 'betas' that keep us going, with probably a fairly minimal, or even positive, impact on production (although I do speculate here).
 
While it's true that the prologues take some amount of effort to finalise and get onto the shelves, the content and quality of them is just another part of the normal development process. Apart from generating a "money for old rope" revenue stream to fund the actual development, it gives them opportunity to get feedback from thousands of real-world gamers and tweak developments accordingly - the result of which is a more polished, refined game.
 
The PD studio and staff has been growing consistently with the development of GT5. While they may have to lose a few employees to develop menus and code for a "Prologue" game, there are more employees (most likely) working on finishing the proper "GT5." So, I wouldn't say they're "wasting time."
 
Prologue gave me about a year of playing GT that I wouldn't have had otherwise. Okay so I wished there were more tracks and a better online system but, hell, it was better than nothing. I got no problem with Sony's decision to sell me it and I'd say it was a damn sight more than a demo (2-3 cars and 1 or two tracks is about the norm for a driving game demo)
 
On one hand, sure, it took some time to create Prologue... On the other hand, they had a platform to learn about online racing, tweak certain aspects to the players' likings and thanks to massive sales, a carte blanche budget for GT5.
 

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